Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

Of course you can't take everything of Myers Briggs at face value. Even inbetween the Types there are different people who sometimes act and think completely different. I have seen other INPFs who I would never agree with even if my life depended on it. I have also seen INFPs stereotypes flying around that make my head hurt. However I don't think it is on the same level as a Horoscope or something similar. Extroverted behaviour and introverted behaviour does exist for example. You can tell how people tendencies are when you observe long enough. But you cannot tell if they are Piesces or Libra or whatever. Also personalities can change over time. No one is bound to his type. There are people who switch types monthy and those who stay with one for a longer period of time. I personally will stick with Myers Briggs until I find a more efficient method to get to know me and the people around me.

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

No, no, no. Let's keep our terms straight. The rebuttals here to non-science are mostly vague and inaccurate. The question of binaries vs. continuous scales misses the point completely. The reason that theories – any theories – are non- scientific is that they do not yield to falsifiability through repeated applications of the scientific method. A peer-reviewed journal is often (not always) a fairly good indicator of whether the scientific method has been appropriately applied. Not all empiricism is scientific. Not all non-science is unhelpful.

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

Lol, I didn’t even need to watch that to know that Myers Briggs is not scientific. I had assumed most people didn’t consider it a real truth. Sort of like horoscopes. It’s just sort of fun. And that’s ok.

I’ve been labeled ENFP and I do find that a lot of the characteristics do fit me but had I been labeled something else I probably would have found characteristics from that fit me there as well. It’s just how our minds work.

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

Yet does any of psychology have such supporting evidence? Say what you will about the test, it worked flawlessly to describe me. However, no scientific principle works flawlessly, even Gravity is variable to where you are on the planet.

What I find far more common is the number of women who are listed as INFP but then describe a decidedly non-INFP woman, as themselves. It is very confusing on who they want to find.

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

I thought it had its basis in Jungian archetype? And that Jungian theory also had its basis in Plato's observations. My understanding is that there is some science to it, and that, while the science of psychology is young, there was more than a kernel of truth to it? And if someone doesn't believe that there's some truth to MBTI, then what on earth are they doing on this website in the first place?

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

I work with science and pseudoscience on a daily basis + I've studied psychology and MBTI was addressed there, so I'm probably qualified to tell what's wrong with MBTI. From a scientific standpoint, there are 6 problems that I can think of right now. Let's begin by saying that the main criticism stems from organizational psychology (not personality psychology):
1) Reliability: When MBTI was tested as a tool for selecting new employees, some people got different MBTI results when retested (which means there's an issue with scientific reliability). -
2) Validity: A) When MBTI was analyzed through a process, called statistical "factor analysis" (FA), it turned out that there should be 6 temperaments and not 4. FA also found a lot of differences that were not accounted for by MBTI; B) Correlations were found between types that should not exist according to MBTI. Altogether, that means there's a big issue with the scientific validity of MBTI. -
3) When used to hire employees, studies have found that MBTI type has no effect on success within an occupation, which means that MBTI falls short as a selection tool for hiring employees. -
4) There are problems with the underlying theory. For example, the function stacks are not measurable and therefore not falsifiable (= verifiable), which means that that part of MBTI is pseudoscience. -
5) The Barnum/Forer Effect: This effect says that as long as descriptions are vague enough, they can apply to anyone. To add to that, it's scientifically proven that we are generally bad at assessing our own personality (e.g. Dunning-Kruger effect). That fact combined with the Forer effect means personality typing in general is a risky business, which means that scientific reliability and validity is necessary to bypass those problems, and that is what the MBTI lacks.
6) There is evidence that ambiversion is a real, which is a concept that MBTI rejects as you're either I or E. This non-dimensional way of measuring personality traits is a problem because really nothing works like that; There is always some overlap between two opposing factors (e.g.: hot vs cold: where does cold transition into hot?) and most people of the overall population should be in this overlapping zone because the population can be described with Bell curve for spectral traits like I-E. This overlapping zone would be ambiversion in the context of MBTI.

Altogether, there are definitely legitimate concerns from a scientific standpoint, but from my years of experience with MBTI, I feel that outsiders are too quick to generalize the Forer effect onto MBTI as I do think that MBTI type descriptions are detailed enough. Also, it's clear that MBTI fails as a tool for hiring employees, but then we're ignoring the fact that MBTI has other uses too: E.g.: self-exploration and I do feel like MBTI is a good tool for that, even if FA found some issues with that. In conclusion, as a scientist myself, I concede that MBTI is not a scientific tool and that is should not be used as such, but that is no problem to me because there already is a tool that meets the reliability and validity requirements (The Big Five personality tool), which is why I view MBTI as nothing else but an imperfect tool for self-exploration. Regarding the horoscopes, anyone with familiar with MBTI knows that it is nothing like horoscopes, so I wouldn't pay attention to that.

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

^
3) When used to hire employees, studies have found that MBTI type has no effect on success within an occupation, which means that MBTI falls short as a selection tool for hiring employees. -
4) There are problems with the underlying theory. For example, the function stacks are not measurable and therefore not falsifiable (= verifiable), which means that that part of MBTI is pseudoscience. -
5) The Barnum/Forer Effect: This effect says that as long as descriptions are vague enough, they can apply to anyone. To add to that, it's scientifically proven that we are generally bad at assessing our own personality (e.g. Dunning-Kruger effect). That fact combined with the Forer effect means personality typing in general is a risky business, which means that scientific reliability and validity is necessary to bypass those problems, and that is what the MBTI lacks.
6) There is evidence that ambiversion is a real, which is a concept that MBTI rejects as you're either I or E. This non-dimensional way of measuring personality traits is a problem because really nothing works like that; There is always some overlap between two opposing factors (e.g.: hot vs cold: where does cold transition into hot?) and most people of the overall population should be in this overlapping zone because the population can be described with Bell curve for spectral traits like I-E. This overlapping zone would be ambiversion in the context of MBTI.

Altogether, there are definitely legitimate concerns from a scientific standpoint, but from my years of experience with MBTI, I feel that outsiders are too quick to generalize the Forer effect onto MBTI as I do think that MBTI type descriptions are detailed enough. Also, it's clear that MBTI fails as a tool for hiring employees, but then we're ignoring the fact that MBTI has other uses too: E.g.: self-exploration and I do feel like MBTI is a good tool for that, even if FA found some issues with that. In conclusion, as a scientist myself, I concede that MBTI is not a scientific tool and that is should not be used as such, but that is no problem to me because there already is a tool that meets the reliability and validity requirements (The Big Five personality tool), which is why I view MBTI as nothing else but an imperfect tool for self-exploration. Regarding the horoscopes, anyone with familiar with MBTI knows that it is nothing like horoscopes, so I wouldn't pay attention to that.

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

6) There is evidence that ambiversion is a real, which is a concept that MBTI rejects as you're either I or E. This non-dimensional way of measuring personality traits is a problem because really nothing works like that; There is always some overlap between two opposing factors (e.g.: hot vs cold: where does cold transition into hot?) and most people of the overall population should be in this overlapping zone because the population can be described with Bell curve for spectral traits like I-E. This overlapping zone would be ambiversion in the context of MBTI.

Altogether, there are definitely legitimate concerns from a scientific standpoint, but from my years of experience with MBTI, I feel that outsiders are too quick to generalize the Forer effect onto MBTI as I do think that MBTI type descriptions are detailed enough. Also, it's clear that MBTI fails as a tool for hiring employees, but then we're ignoring the fact that MBTI has other uses too: E.g.: self-exploration and I do feel like MBTI is a good tool for that, even if FA found some issues with that. In conclusion, as a scientist myself, I concede that MBTI is not a scientific tool and that is should not be used as such, but that is no problem to me because there already is a tool that meets the reliability and validity requirements (The Big Five personality tool), which is why I view MBTI as nothing else but an imperfect tool for self-exploration. Regarding the horoscopes, anyone with familiar with MBTI knows that it is nothing like horoscopes, so I wouldn't pay attention to that.

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

^Also, it's clear that MBTI fails as a tool for hiring employees, but then we're ignoring the fact that MBTI has other uses too: E.g.: self-exploration and I do feel like MBTI is a good tool for that, even if FA found some issues with that. In conclusion, as a scientist myself, I concede that MBTI is not a scientific tool and that is should not be used as such, but that is no problem to me because there already is a tool that meets the reliability and validity requirements (The Big Five personality tool), which is why I view MBTI as nothing else but an imperfect tool for self-exploration. Regarding the horoscopes, anyone with familiar with MBTI knows that it is nothing like horoscopes, so I wouldn't pay attention to that.

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

@INTJandHSP Then I ought to assume you also included cognitive function theory in your analysis - or were you merely sticking with the test provided with its vague/unrealiable summaries such as these https://www.16personalities.com/personality-types

I pressume you are also well familiar with the these.
http://www.celebritytypes.com/blog/2014/02/mbti-for-skeptics/
http://www.psychologyjunkie.com/2015/07/23/debunking-the-major-arguments-against-the-mbti/

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

Soloread - while you say these others are not refereed journals, at one time Psychology Today was not, either. However, the articles that were posted by Frodr are good articles that are to a large degree "busting" some of the more false info spread about MBTI - such as the use of handwriting analysis - which has never been part of MBTI to my knowledge. I would have thought Isabel Meyers-Briggs would have mentioned it in her book, or David Kiersey would have mentioned it in his.

MBTI was used during WWII to help place people into career types that would "suit" them. It had a good degree of success in that arena, from what I am to understand. As well, there is a definite tendency for certain types to gravitate to certain careers - NTs, for example, have a tendency to gravitate towards careers in technology, and particularly into the hard sciences.

One thing that struck me that INTJandHSP pointed out was that the basic assumption by MBTI was that according to the 4 dimensions of the MBTI, each would have to have a more or less bimodal distribution to make this true. However, most things in the world are not according to a bimodal distribution. Point taken that most things fall under a gaussian distribution (bell curve). I have no counter argument to make on that account.

Though, while the MBTI may have problems, again, psychology is also still a very young science. Few things in psych are very well defined. There aren't all that many hard and fast rules. For me, I wouldn't necessarily take MBTI as absolute. There's plenty of variation within type. However, there are more than enough truisms. And I have found the MBTI to be a fantastic communication tool - if nothing else - a starting point, at least, for understanding the motivations of others.

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

Soloread - while you say these others are not refereed journals, at one time Psychology Today was not, either. However, the articles that were posted by Frodr are good articles that are to a large degree "busting" some of the more false info spread about MBTI - such as the use of handwriting analysis - which has never been part of MBTI to my knowledge. I would have thought Isabel Meyers-Briggs would have mentioned it in her book, or David Kiersey would have mentioned it in his.

MBTI was used during WWII to help place people into career types that would "suit" them. It had a good degree of success in that arena, from what I am to understand. As well, there is a definite tendency for certain types to gravitate to certain careers - NTs, for example, have a tendency to gravitate towards careers in technology, and particularly into the hard sciences.

One thing that struck me that INTJandHSP pointed out was that the basic assumption by MBTI was that according to the 4 dimensions of the MBTI, each would have to have a more or less bimodal distribution to make this true. However, most things in the world are not according to a bimodal distribution. Point taken that most things fall under a gaussian distribution (bell curve). I have no counter argument to make on that account.

Though, while the MBTI may have problems, again, psychology is also still a very young science. Few things in psych are very well defined. There aren't all that many hard and fast rules. For me, I wouldn't necessarily take MBTI as absolute. There's plenty of variation within type. However, there are more than enough truisms. And I have found the MBTI to be a fantastic communication tool - if nothing else - a starting point, at least, for understanding the motivations of others.

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

Let me pick up on another distinction. I maintain that MBTI is unscientific, but even some scientific theories come with built-in imprecision (e.g., ε, δ.) So, in a heuristic sense, are MBTI types accurate enough? I'd say no.

One of the ironies of MBTI is that so many people feel validated that they belong to a type, yet insist that they are exceptions within their own type – often, “on a cusp", like I/E. This should be a warning sign. For example, we can find the Jungian function pairs Ne/Si + Fe/Ti and their associated behaviors in four types – ENTP, ESFJ, INTP, ISFJ – though obviously in meaningfully different orders. These temperaments are clearly not the same.

We all use all eight function/attitudes at one time or another, so we can all find real-life experiences consistent with our assigned types. A better application of Jung's or M-B's framework is to understand that we all do this, so let's try and connect with whichever ones you and I are using here and now.

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

Myers Briggs Not Scientific?

Here is a very readable book review of Merve Emre’s “The Personality Brokers” (Doubleday) -- the story of how the MBTI fell to earth. ( https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/10/what-personality-tests-really-deliver )